Without doubt, 2020 has been a very difficult year for the motoring industry. Figures from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) for the first six months of the year show that new car registrations are down 34.5% (52,891) on the same period last year (80,758).

Meanwhile, light commercial vehicles (LCV) year to date have witnessed a drop of 30.9% (10,579).

Heavy goods vehicle (HGV) registrations are down 32% (1,224), while used car imports to the end of June have seen a decrease of 57.1% (22,789) on 2019 (53,126).

Light commercial vehicles

Analysing the data gathered by beepbeep.ie, the most popular new light commercial vehicle (LCV) registered in the first six months was the Peugeot Partner van. There were 852 units of this particular model registered, 16 units behind on the same period in 2019. Following behind is Citroen with its Berlingo, Ford with its Transit and Volkswagen with its Caddy and Transporter vans.

On the 4x4 side of the house, Toyota with its Land Cruiser was the most popular new 4x4 registered from January until the end of June, coming in at the eighth most popular LCV registered.

In total, there were 484 new Land Cruisers registered up to 30 June. The Land Cruiser was followed by the Ford Ranger, which had 245 new units registered during this period.

Meanwhile, Land Rover with its Discovery ranked the third highest 4x4 registered, with 159 new models registered, down just under 24% on the same period for the year previous.

The Kia Sportage and Mitsubishi L200 were next in line, although 4wd is not offered on the Sportage models as standard, with the majority specified as 2wd.

Given that overall LCV registrations are back 31% for the period, it is interesting that a number of 4x4 models are up in terms of new units registered on last year. A number of these are popular models within the farming community.

The Land Cruiser is up almost 7% on 2019, the Ford Ranger marginally up 1.24% on last year and the L200 up just over 24% on last year.

202 registrations

With July being the yearly registration split, it is expected that the trade will have improved for the month of July with the introduction of 202 registrations.